After The Last of Us, Fallout and Tomb Raider, industry experts predict what's next for video games on TV

Now that Fallout season 2 has wrapped up its run on Prime Video, what does the future hold for video game adaptations on TV? And why does Fallout work so well on television, anyway?

"It's the idea, really," says gaming industry expert Christopher Dring, editor in chief of The Game Business.

"Fallout is a rich, realised world in which to tell multiple stories. A distinct visual style, humour, action, monsters... as a role-playing game, it isn't just a Lord of the Rings-alike fantasy game. It is distinctive.

"It's not easy - getting that humour, that violence, that world to feel right takes patience. And, frankly, it feels like the perfect partnership between TV creators and game intellectual property (IP)."

Amazon is clearly keen to replicate the success of Fallout, with both God of War and Tomb Raider lined up for serialised live-action treatment on Prime Video.

HBO is hungry for more, too, planning Baldur's Gate 3 as its next TV darling, with The Last of Us only having one more season of material left to mine.

What do video game industry experts like Dring make of this trend, and which games would they like to see adapted next? As gaming levels up on TV, these industry legends certainly have notes.

Want to raid some tombs?

"On paper, the Tomb Raider adaptation sounds great," observes George Osborn, editor of the Video Game Industry Memo.

"Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of the best writers in the biz. The cast is looking great, especially with Sophie Turner, Jason Isaacs, and Celia Imrie on board. And Amazon's success with Fallout offers some hope that the adaptation will be a good one.

"I think the biggest challenge is how Tomb Raider translates into a TV series rather than a film. I know that there was the original Tomb Raider film adaptation starring Angelina Jolie and a reboot with Alicia Vikander.

"But even though the presence of historic predecessors might have put Amazon off from making another film, the game feels better suited for two hours of popcorn flickery instead of a multi-episode TV season."

Which game should be adapted next? Christopher Dring says, "I’d love for Alan Wake to make its way to the small screen. A wonderful horror game, with compelling characters and a distinct European-style. Remedy’s partnership with Annapurna opens up that possibility. It could be the new Twin Peaks."

As Luke Addison, editor in chief at Thumb Wars sees it, "The team behind the Tomb Raider show has it harder in ways than that of the Fallout show.

"Tomb Raider is, and always will be, about the character of Lara Croft. While she may have changed in her various iterations in small ways over the years, she is, at heart, an explorer and a woman who wants adventure, and she does the right thing along the way to boot.

"If the show doesn't get this characterisation right, and in a way that resonates with viewers, everything else will be redundant."

Actor, filmmaker and former tech journalist Waseem Mirza agrees. "Tomb Raider's a tough one because Lara is so, so iconic," he says.

"You can't just make her another action hero. The thing about the games, especially the recent ones, is that she's driven by curiosity as much as capability. She's solving puzzles and thinking, she's not just jumping from ledge to ledge!

Tomb Raider's a tough one because Lara is so, so iconic.

"If Amazon leans too hard into 'woman with guns, lots of explosions,' they'll miss the point. I think Lara Croft needs to feel like someone who understands archaeology, who's genuinely intelligent.

"The action should feel earned from character, not grafted on top. That balance is harder than most people think."

Certainly, a stir was caused online by the recent reveal of Sophie Turner's retro-inspired costume test for the role. And this next adaptation has been earning plenty of news coverage, too, with its string of casting stories.

Boy! Get ready for God of War

"God of War is fascinating because the recent games are almost already cinematic," Mirza points out.

"They're so tightly directed that adapting them feels risky. But I think the challenge is that the power of those games is the relationship between Kratos and Atreus. And a lot of that works in games because of the intimate camera, the real-time pacing. In a linear show, you've got to find a different way to convey that same weight."

Mirza adds, "Kratos isn't someone who talks a lot. He communicates through silence and presence. That's actually harder to pull off on screen than you'd think, because an audience might just think he's brooding. The actor has to make that silence mean something."

Addison is enthusiastic that Ryan Hurst, a Sons of Anarchy alum, "is taking on the tall task of portraying Kratos in the show. As a long-time fan of his, I can honestly say I'm thrilled."

Which game should be adapted next? Waseem Mirza says, "I'm obsessed with the idea of a Half-Life adaptation. Instead of holding your hand with exposition dumps, they trust you to understand the world through observation. We have a tendency to want to explain everything now - aka the death of subtext. Half-Life wouldn't let you do that. You'd have to trust your audience to be smart."

Addison continues: "Not just because he'll bring the physicality to the role that Kratos desperately needs, but because he has also has the undercurrent of emotion needed to round out the character to something close to what we have in the most recent game iteration, from Christopher Judge."

George Osborn adds that God of War has "a strong narrative core to build a show around, likely drawing on the example of the Pedro Pascal/Bella Ramsey dynamic in The Last of Us TV show to push it forward.

"But if someone had said the game was being turned into a film, that would feel like a more natural fit for me.

"However, there are some bigger practical questions around the adaptation. The series was rebooted after Rafe Judkins, its showrunner, departed. Its success will be shaped by how Cory Balrog, the game's creator, works with its new showrunner Ronald D Moore and directors like Frederick EO Toye - who is working on the show after directing episodes of Shogun and The Boys."

Mazin is gathering his party

The involvement of video game executives in their TV adaptations is a real hot-button topic, with no two shows taking exactly the same approach.

Bethesda boss Todd Howard is very involved in the Fallout show, while Neil Druckmann from Naughty Dog went so far as to be a co-showrunner of The Last of Us for two seasons (before refocusing on his game-development duties).

When Baldur's Gate 3 was announced as the next big HBO adaptation (with Druckmann's pal Craig Mazin taking the reins), game fans made their concerns known upon finding out that the game's developers, Larian, were not going to be actively involved in the TV show.

Which game should be adapted next? Luke Addison says, "Gears of War is an obvious one. A cinematic game at its very core, it's crying out for an adaptation, as long as they throw enough money at it to do it justice."

"Well, yeah," Dring observes. "It's worth noting that Larian stepped away from the series to work on their own IP [Divinity], which makes sense. They're just not involved. The IP existed long before Larian, and will do long after.

"But it looks like Larian are going to be tapped up for their thoughts and views, so I'm not sure what more you'd except. It's not their brand and they're not working on Baldur's Gate anymore."

Plus, with Mazin announcing his intent to weave into the show some iconic BG3 characters, and the actors that made them beloved, there are certainly ways to win back some goodwill without having Larian boss Swen Vincke among HBO's executive producers.

Mirza adds, "If anyone can pull off an adaptation of that celebrated game, then it's most definitely showrunner Craig Mazin pairing up once more with HBO, who've already proven their combined strengths with The Last of Us, which had me and millions more hooked from the very first episode. I can't wait to see what they have in store for us."

How did we get here?

Gaming adaptations, particularly Fallout and The Last of Us (not to mention animated darlings like Arcane), have become a prestigious corner of the TV landscape. We've come a long way in recent years.

Addison remembers, "Only a few years ago, the general consensus was that films and TV based on video games were always going to be objectively terrible, and the same with tie-in video games.

"Now, at least half of that is slowly changing. It seems to be much more regular that we get high-quality adaptations based on the IPs we love, rather than terrible ones that no one really recognises and are universally despised."

Which game should be adapted next? George Osborn says, "The game that I’d love to see adapted into a TV show is Cyberpunk 2077. The animated Edgerunners is a fantastic TV adaptation in its own right. A live-action series featuring the key cast members — Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand, Idris Elba as Solomon Reed — would be brilliant. I also think the show would have the potential to run and run, given how many outstanding stories Night City contains."

 

How did that change happen? As Mirza puts it, "The best thing that's happened is that filmmakers have stopped being ashamed of games. They're not treating them as 'pop culture that needs to be elevated.' They're treating them as narratives in their own right, partly because this generation of filmmakers are gamers.

"Games have been telling genuinely sophisticated stories for years. Television and film are finally catching up.

"When Halo failed, it wasn't because the IP was weak - it was because the creators didn't respect the mythology and audiences do care about that. Compare that to Fallout or The Last of Us: the makers are fans. They truly understand why people care."

Dring believes this is "a huge opportunity. Games are not a single genre. It's not like game fatigue will happen in the way superhero fatigue has.

"Every year, dozens of new story-driven games are released, with distinct visuals and characters, that can be adapted. 12 months ago, Clair Obscur and Arc Raiders didn't exist, for example. Games are more like books in that this is a sector now ripe for the big and small screen industries to explore.

"But what I don't believe is this idea of things getting even closer. In the past, we've seen efforts to bridge the world of games and movies together creatively. Defiance is the most famous example, where events in the TV series show up in the games, and vice versa."

This is no passing trend.

Dring states in no uncertain terms, "We will see more games and TV collaborations. The big blockbuster games take five, six, seven years to complete – even longer in some cases – so TV and film provide an opportunity for the games industry to keep its IP fresh and relevant, and keep giving fans something to enjoy while they wait [for the next game in the series].

"Meanwhile, the TV world is discovering the potential that games can have on the smaller screen. This is no passing trend."

Mirza adds, "The lesson from Fallout's success, to me, is simple. Just respect the story, understand why people care, and then translate that to your medium. Do that, and audiences have shown they respond.

He continues: "It's not complicated, but it's something a lot of adaptations have gotten wrong before, and I think we still need to be careful we don't go back to the dreary past of gaming TV and film adaptations gone wrong.

"But, for now at least, it seems the curse has been lifted, and long may that continue." Certainly, it feels like viewers are ready to blast through the next few levels of TV adaptations. Game on.

Read more:

• Inside The Last of Us "revolution" that made players cry
• How Fallout season 1 "emboldened" the Fallout 76 team to deliver a huge in-game crossover
• I wrote the book on Tomb Raider - Here's how Sophie Turner and Alix Wilton Regan will rewrite Lara Croft's history

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